


Brooklyn Don't Feel the Same (Maybe I'm the who's changed)

by anxiously_sarcastic



Series: Sounds of Shoot [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everything's Okay, F/F, Shaw feels things, Shaw's alive, mentions of Shaw's torture, post-Samaritan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiously_sarcastic/pseuds/anxiously_sarcastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If someone had told Shaw two years ago that she’d been living with Root and she’s be the closest to “in love” that a sociopath could be, she’d shot them on the spot.</p><p>But she is and it feels human and odd and natural.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brooklyn Don't Feel the Same (Maybe I'm the who's changed)

**Author's Note:**

> This the first of a series I've wanted to do for a while. Every story will be inspired by a song; I just write based off whatever I come up with while listening to it. This is based off the song Pride by American Authors which is also where the title is from. Unbetaed so all mistakes are completely mine.

Being back is a strange feeling to say the least. 

Everything is completely the same. It feels like Shaw hasn’t been gone at all.

The subway looks the same with the yellow orange glow and the smell of old stone and underground and a scent that lingers from the library that just reminds her of Finch and his suits. The room that she called home during her shadow days is exactly the same except there is a set of sheets (John had mumbled something about Root using the room as a home during Shaw’s time in captivity and it makes something stir deep inside of her, thinking of Root alone in the cold room, resting her tired, skinny body on the equally skinny mattress). The first time she walks in, Bear runs into greet her, sniffing at her feet protectively. Root and John and Harold look exactly like they did nine months ago (except Root’s eyes are tired and John has new wrinkles around his eyes and Harold’s hair has a new sprinkling of gray around the ears). 

The Machine is shaky like Bambi taking his first steps, but things improve considerably after they deliver the final to Samaritan, Harold and Root’s virus cutting the head off the giant (when she says they, she means the boys and Root because Shaw is still weak, confined to the safety of the safe house she now calls home, with Leon of all people watching over, but it’s fun because she can only just walk by herself and she sleeps half the day away, but she still scares the shit of him). A few weeks after Samaritan’s deactivation, Harold turns a blind eye as Root ends Greer’s life. He believes that Root simply put a bullet in him and dumped his body out at sea, but Shaw had felt a swelling of pride bloom in her when she learned that Root had put multiply bullets in him and then pushed him out of a helicopter, still alive until his body hit the ocean. 

A few months after her return, she has enough strength to walk to the subway and she bites her tongue at being assigned the job of helping Harold with the nerd stuff because she’s just so damn glad to be useful again. It feels oddly normal like she’s not a completely different person, still working on putting herself back together; it’s like she’s still hiding from Samaritan and no time has passed and the only difference is that instead living out of the back room, she goes home to a safe house and a killer-turned-prophet.

She’s spends her free moments doing exercises, trying to gain her weight back and rebuilding her muscles because she’s scrawny and her old clothes are loose and she can’t fucking pick up Root and slam her into a wall like she’s been dying to. She pushes herself ignoring Harold’s warnings of straining herself and takes to seeing how fast she can sprint from one end of the subway to the other just because it puts the older man on edge. Fusco and John “borrow” targets and sandbags from the precinct and shooting a gun is like riding a bike to her and it’s no time before her accuracy and precision is back to what it used to be. 

Harold finally gives her the clear to work missions again and she can’t help but smile with pure glee when he hands over her old gun along with a file and instructions on where to meet Root because the Harold’s conditions were that she had to work this mission with someone and Root’s conditions were that someone had to be her. It’s an easy mission dealing with a café owner that let a thug run drugs through his shop and when the dealer comes after the guy, Root gives her those sad puppy eyes and asks her to stay in the car and Shaw complies until she spots more thugs approaching the café, taking them out before they can hurt Ro-the mission. 

After that everything slips back into normal, like before Samaritan except Shaw’s living in the same safe house that Root is. Shaw has a tooth brush next to Root’s and the second bedroom is filled with array of outfits and uniforms and wigs. There are at least three laptops in her living room and there’s actually food in her fridge. Her bed is actually a bed, comfy with clean sheets, and not just a mattress in the middle of the room. After seeing so many disguises and personas, she knows what Root looks like (it’s red, thin glasses and wavy brown hair and t-shirts and sweaters and her hair and pillow smells like vanilla). Their life is nowhere near normal, Root often comes home with odd wounds and on more than one occasions Shaw finds unconscious business officials zip tied in the hall closet and she’s still not over the time the bathtub had a family of hedgehogs in it (she thinks it has something to do with Root’s cover as a vet, but the animals are gone the next morning and she decides it’s better for her mental health if she just doesn’t ask).

Now her free time is filled with takeout while watching crap television and busting up drug cartels with her not-girlfriend. Her one-night stands are replaced with hot, fuck-up sex that actually has some sort of emotion involved and sometimes Root meets her eye and she can’t help that the hacker’s name slips out of her mouth. She shares a bed with another person and when that person is out working, Shaw finds it hard to sleep, wondering if Root is being shot at, if she’s actually getting sleep or eating, if she’s got back-up or playing her stupid martyr game (even though Root’s apparent death wish has faded with Shaw’s return and Samaritan’s demise). 

If someone had told Shaw two years ago that she’d been living with Root and she’s be the closest to “in love” that a sociopath could be, she’d shot them on the spot.

But she is and it feels human and odd and natural. 

\---

They never talk about Samaritan and the time Shaw spent away. 

But one night, a rogue detective’s bullet comes too close and after it’s dug out and Root’s cleaning the blood from her hands, she asks Shaw exactly what happened to her, finally succumbing to the wonder behind which scars were already on her body and which are new. 

Shaw just digs a file out of the back of the closest and presses it into Root’s hands, still cold from the water, hints of Shaw’s blood still under her nails. 

“I know you want me to tell and confide in you and shit,” She’s mumbling, not meeting Root’s like a scolded child, but their hands are still touching because she’s trying so hard to get her point across. “I can’t do that. I can’t go back there, but I want you to know.” 

So Shaw pretends to watch a Cowboy’s game, but her focus is really in the corner of her, eyes secretly glued to Root who is sitting at their kitchen table, quiet and statue still except for her hands flipping pages and eyes scanning pages. 

After a life time, Root rises from the table and moves silently to block Shaw’s view of the TV. Her reaction is what Shaw expected. Her eyes are watery, but determined as she reaches down, yanking Shaw up by her tank top. Shaw’s hands settle on Root’s hips and their lips meet in a heated, frenzied kiss, neither of them caring about Shaw’s beer that feel to the floor and splashed over their bare feet. Root lifts Shaw up and she’d never admit it, but she lets out a sound of surprise at the hacker’s new strength as her legs wrap around a skinny waist. She’s carried to the bedroom in a flurry of kisses and placed gently on the bed, clothes going everywhere. It’s messy and desperate and it feels exactly what they’re first time did except this time, it’s Shaw whispering “I’m alive,” against Root’s collarbone as their hips work together in tandem. 

They fuck for what seems like hours in their own messed up way of making love. As Root tumbles over the edge for the last time, a strained “I love you,” escapes her lips and Shaw swallows it in a kiss, trying to convey with her lips and fingers what she can’t say with words. 

They never cuddle, but they always sleep very close. They face each other, Root on her right side so her good ear isn’t blocked and Shaw claims that she has always slept on left side and Root pretends to believe her. They sleep close enough that Shaw can feel Root’s breath on her face and sometimes, before she drifts off, she feels Root’s hand twine with hers and she thinks back to the video of Root walking on a building’s ledge and chooses not complain about it. 

Shaw usually falls asleep first, but tonight it different. Root’s exhausted, psychically and emotionally, as soon as they break apart and settle, her eyes are closed and she’s asleep. Shaw can’t tear her eyes away from the serene sight before her.

Root is innocent and peaceful in sleep. She briefly wonders what Root looked like as a baby, as a child, her only knowledge is that Samantha was blond and probably had a laughable Texan accent. 

She thinks back to the file that is currently sitting on the kitchen table. It was a collection of Martine’s notes, photos, and Greer’s test results. John had stolen it from Decima headquarters, giving it to her to do with what she wanted. She’d never read it, but she knew everything that was in there, having lived every excruciating detail. 

Martine’s bullets from the stock exchange had been removed sloppily and the wounds stitched with odd precision that they’d barely left a mark. They’d broken all of fingers, one every day for ten days. She’d been beaten for three days straight, her assailants only stopping when she’d passed out; most of her ribs had been broken, her nose broken twice, and she’d lost count of the fractures. She’d been subjected to assortments of chemicals and narcotics. She’d been subjected to isolation in a dark, empty room. She’d been locked in a room with a TV that played stock exchange footage on loop, the sound of Root’s scream constantly haunting her. They’d presented her with pictures of dead mangled bodies resembling her friends and even Bear. Foreign drugs flowed through her body as she had been put through shock therapy and sensory deprivation. She’d been put through hell and worse. She’d cried more in nine months than in her whole life; she’d begged for death. 

But she’d never broke. No matter how many times she had been put in front of a colorful screen, no matter how many prodding questions Greer asked, no matter how many times she hallucinated Root, she’d never broke. Her mind had stayed her own; her loyalties had stayed the same. She’d whispered names in her minds every morning, reminding herself that she was fighting for more than herself. Reminding herself that Root needed a safety rail. John bought the wrong kind of bones for Bear. She’d missed Gen’s birthday and she’d promised to teach her how to shoot a gun when she turned sixteen. She’d missed her silent vigil outside of her mother’s home on the anniversary of her father’s death.  
She’d named parts of the body and mentally disassembled guns, ran through memories of surgeries before bed. Her dreams had remained her own. Her mind and thoughts were own and she wasn’t giving Samaritan that and she hadn’t. 

The physical wounds had faded and healed. She was still trying to figure out the emotions she felt know, the trauma that would probably never completely fade and the intensified affection she felt for her not-girlfriend. 

She reached out a finger, lightly trailing it down Root’s jawline with the stealth of a ninja, her movements almost curious, feeling like she was seeing the hacker for the first time.

Having a home felt strange to say the least. Love was even stranger. 

But Shaw was willing to learn.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this was actually enjoyable and wasn't completely horrible. It started out as Shaw watching Root sleep and thinking about how she never succumbed to mind control, but it went in a different direction and turned into a character study/season 5 AU. And remember, kids, short stories take a couple hours and comments take a couple second.


End file.
